Over the last couple of days I have cut and roughed out some bird forms in preparation for a couple of hours in the workshop with a friend. To give us choice I have roughed out 3 wee bird forms as you can see in the photo above.
Some process photos follow including cutting a blank out of a camphor laurel log.
More photos of progressing the forms follow.
I hope to post on where we get to if we manage to make time in the workshop.
Today I finished off the three wee birds I have a commission for. As you can see from the photo above they are similar but unique - finished birds on the workbench. The grain of the offcuts of wood a friend gave me dictated the carving and sanding and final outcome to a certain extent.
Some process photos follow.
Below is another photo of the completed and oiled birds taken through the workshop, aka shed, window.
I now need to organise the delivery of the trio.
Below is photo of our table from the market yesterday - we had a successful day.
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At the PopUp Art Show on the weekend I was asked if I could make 3 comfort birds before I headed back to Maleny. I did not promise I could; but said I would give it a go.
As you can see from the photo above I have made some progress with one of the birds. In the photos below you can see I'm attempting to carve the 3 birds together starting with cutting the timber blocks and marking the 3 up.
Other progress photos follow.
If I continue to make good progress whilst doing maintenance and other jobs around the cottage I should be able to deliver them before heading to our Maleny home.
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One of my goals for this trip to the cottage is to whittle-carve a few wee birds. I tested my ability to saw a block of wood using hand held saws before I left home. Over the last couple of days I have worked on my first cottage bird and by this afternoon I had got the bird to a point where it needs a bit more fine sanding and oiling as you can see in the opening photo.
The following photos show the process of sawing a wedge of birch.
Once I had cut a couple of blocks to the required size I marked up one of the blocks and used a cheap and dodgy coping saw the cut a rough bird shape. I have ordered a quality coping saw for future bird projects.
After giving the rough form a sand I used one of our wood carving knives I brought over from our Maleny home to carve a better shape in preparation for hand sanding.
As I said in the opening paragraph my next steps are to finish the sanding the bird in the opening photo and then oil the bird.
I managed to finish whittling-carving, sanding and oiling my small comfort bird> It was whittled-carved from some salvaged camphor laurel. The opening image shows the bird in Fiona's hand - a comfortable fit.
Process photos follow.
I'm really pleased with the outcome - it shows I can whittle-carve more birds using a low tech approach.
I would like to be able to whittle-carve small wooden comfort birds that could be gifted to folk who might need them. Something I would like to do whilst in Scotland.
Comfort birds are small palm sized bird forms that can be held and give the holder a sense of calm, peace, hope etc.
I have watched a number of videos on how to whittle-carve such a bird. However, most videos indicate one would cut the rough bird form from a sanded or planed block of timber using a band or scroll saw - I have neither of those so I wanted to see if I could cut a rough form from a salvaged length of camphor laurel branch; and then finish the task with hand held knife and hand sanding.
The opening photo shows the rough form I have achieved to date - including having done a bit of hand sanding to remove rough edges. The photo below shows the form marked up for knife work.
Following are some progress-process photos going from cutting a block out of the camphor laurel branch through to rough cut form before a bit of hand sanding. The hand sawing process took quite a while; but it is good to know one can take a reasonably low tech approach to the task
Over the weekend I hope to do some hand whittling. This has been a big learning process for me.
